9. "The Desirability and Practicability of limiting offspring," says Dr. Stockham, "are the subject of frequent inquiry. Fewer and better children are desired by right-minded parents. Many men and women, wise in other things of the world, permit generation as a chance result of copulation, without thought of physical or mental conditions to be transmitted to the child. Coition, the one important act of all others, carrying with it the most vital results, is usually committed for selfish gratification. Many a drunkard owes his life-long appetite for alcohol to the fact that the inception of his life could be traced to a night of dissipation on the part of his father. Physical degeneracy and mental derangements are too often caused by the parents producing offspring while laboring under great mental strain or bodily fatigue. Drunkenness and licentiousness are frequently the heritage of posterity. Future generations demand that such results be averted by better pre-natal influences. The world is groaning under the curse of chance parenthood. It is due to posterity that procreation be brought under the control of reason and conscience.
10. "It Has Been Feared that a Knowledge of means to prevent conception would, if generally diffused, be abused by women; that they would to so great an extent escape motherhood as to bring about social disaster. This fear is not well founded. The maternal instinct is inherent and sovereign in woman. Even the pre-natal influences of a murderous intent on the part of parents scarcely ever
eradicate it. With this natural desire for children, we believe few women would abuse the knowledge or privilege of controlling conception. Although women shrink from forced maternity, and from the bearing of children under the great burden of suffering, as well as other adverse conditions, it is rare to find a woman who is not greatly disappointed if she does not, some time in her life, wear the crown of motherhood.
"An eminent lady teacher, in talking to her pupils, once said: 'The greatest calamity that can befall a woman is never to have a child. The next greatest calamity is to have one only.' From my professional experience I am happy to testify that more women seek to overcome causes of sterility than to obtain knowledge of limiting the size of the family or means to destroy the embryo. Also, if consultation for the latter is sought, it is usually at the instigation of the husband. Believing in the rights of unborn children, and in the maternal instinct, I am consequently convinced that no knowledge should be withheld that will secure proper conditions for the best parenthood.
11. "Many of the Means Used to Prevent conception are injurious, and often lay the foundation for a train of physical ailments. Probably no one means is more serious in its results than the practice of withdrawal, or the discharge of the semen externally to the vagina. The act is incomplete and unnatural, and is followed by results similar to and as disastrous as those consequent upon masturbation. In the male it may result in impotence, in the female in sterility. In both sexes many nervous symptoms are produced, such as headache, defective vision, dyspepsia, insomnia, loss of memory, etc. Very many cases of uterine diseases can be attributed solely to this practice. The objection to the use of the syringe is that if the sperm has passed into the uterus the fluid cannot reach it. A cold fluid may, in some instances, produce contractions to throw it off, but cannot be relied upon."
12. Is It Ever Right to Prevent Conception? We submit the following case of the Juke family, mostly of New York State, as related by R. L. Dugdale, when a member of the Prison Association, and let the reader judge for himself:
"It was traced out by painstaking research that from one woman called Margaret, who, like Topsy, merely 'growed' without pedigree as a pauper in a village on the upper Hudson, about eighty-five years ago, there descended 673
children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, of whom 200 were criminals of the dangerous class, 280 adult paupers, and fifty prostitutes, while 300 children of her lineage died prematurely. The last fact proves to what extent in this family nature was kind to the rest of humanity in saving it from a still larger aggregation of undesirable and costly members, for it is estimated that the expense to the State of the descendants of Maggie was over a million dollars, and the State itself did something also towards preventing a greater expense by the restrain exercised upon the criminals, paupers, and idiots of the family during a considerable portion of their lives."
13. The Legal Aspect.—By the Revised Statutes of the United States it is provided "that no obscene, * * * or lascivious book, picture, or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or producing of abortion shall be carried in the mail, and any person who shall knowingly deposit or cause to be deposited for mailing or delivery any of the hereinbefore mentioned things shall be guilty of misdemeanor," etc. In New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and District of Columbia we find no local law against abortion. Nine states, viz.: New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Wisconsin, Dakotas, Wyoming and California punish the woman upon whom the abortion is attempted; while Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Kansas and California punish the advertising or furnishing of means for the prevention of conception; and Ohio makes it a crime to even have such means in one's possession. There is exception made in favor of every case where the early birth of the infant is necessary to save the life of the mother. It will be noticed that the common law punishes the furnishing or advertising of means for the prevention of conception, and hence regards it as a crime. There is, however, no ban of the civil law on Nature's law as laid down by Nature's God and discovered by medical science, which we here make known.
14. Is Nature's Method Reliable?—Dr. Cowan says: "Sexual excitement hastens the premature ripening and meeting of the germ cell with the sperm cell, and impregnation may result, although intercourse occurs only in the specified two weeks' absence of the egg from the uterus."